double #38

English

SUMMARY

face-off

Politics of face and mask

A “face-off” is a direct confrontation, a duel fought face to face on a shared stage. From the perspective of current politics of the face and the mask, this term, possibly the primal model of an archaic politics of ‘might is right’, must be interrogated anew. What happens when we think of these politics in terms of the off, of that which cannot be (so easily) represented or would rather evade the lit stage, as a sphere of surveillance and control? What if we instead imagine a “mask-off”, like demonstrators all over the world use, and not just for safety reasons, and like social activists, who forsake their individuality to become representatives of movements?
And what if we treat the face itself not as a natural and inevitable fact, but as the first thing with which we start to act in theatre? The wearing of faces and masks is a basis for interwoven practices of aesthetic play and of combative politics that can no longer be sharply distinguished from each other. It’s time to investigate them in more detail.

CONTENTS double 38

EDITORIALTHEME: Face-Off!
Politics of face and mask

Beate Absalon/Sebastian Köthe“Ask Me Why I’m Wearing A Mask.“
On the aesthetics and politics of the flight from the face